When people ask me how I got into this I always say the same thing.
“I learned everything from books!"
It’s true. I grew up in a small town. There were no other performers I could learn from or videos I could watch (these were the pre-internet days) so I spent most of my time at the public library reading every magic book I could.
Back then if you wanted to find me between school getting out at 3pm and catching a ride home with my dad two hours later, you only needed to look back in the corner of the library at the legendary position of 793.8 in the Dewey Decimal System. Those were the call numbers for the magic books - all seven of them.
I learned everything I could from those books. I’d check one out and read it cover to cover. Then, I’d swap it for the next one and so on. Those seven books were all I had and I must have read them dozens of times throughout my childhood.
Over the years I’ve been trying to track down those seven books to add to my collection. Some were harder to find than others. I found one at a used book store in the Chicago suburbs and another one in a garage sale. A friend gifted me the Houdini book I was looking for and I tracked a few of the others down at conventions.
But there was always one book I couldn't find. It was a book by The Amazing Kreskin, one of my first introductions to the fine art of reading people’s minds. For some reason, I’d never come across the book in my travels.
That is, until recently. I was between shows in Maine when I wandered into a used book store. I walked up to the counter with my usual query.
“Do you have any magic books?”
The lady behind the counter barely looked up, gesturing to the back of the store with a wave of her hand.
I walked down the aisle and spotted a small section of books on the bottom shelf. As I knelt down for a better look I noticed a book had fallen onto the floor behind the shelf. I reached between the other books, lifted it out, and there it was: the seventh book!
My collection was complete. After years of casually assembling my collection, I finally had my hands on the full set of books that set me down the path toward my eventual career. Those books had defined my life since I was in kindergarten. Especially the Kreskin one.
I absentmindedly flipped through the book and noticed an inscription in the front. The book was signed to someone else.
I’m not sure who that other person was or where he got it signed. I’m not sure what journey the book took to wind up in my hands in Portland, ME after all those years. But I like to think that in some mysterious way we were on a collision course and it was only a matter of time before I found it.
Why do I say that, you ask? Because Kreskin had autographed it for another person - ANOTHER PERSON NAMED MARK. But now, I like to think he signed it for me.
